


when it's time

by thatdarkhairedgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3604827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdarkhairedgirl/pseuds/thatdarkhairedgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron Weasley, Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when it's time

Something I always wanted but guess I will have to write myself is Ron after leaving the Aurors for the joke shop, Ron giving up his fifteen-year-old ambition to help his brother, Ron sitting through therapy with Hermione and coming to terms with the fact that what he wanted as a teenager is not what he needs as an adult; Ron having to admit that no matter how much he loves him, what is good for Harry isn’t always good for him, how living in his best friend’s shadow almost destroyed them once, he can’t risk making that mistake again —

Someone come talk to me about Ron and Hermione getting themselves back on track, about the two of them realizing that he isn’t as happy puttering around as a house husband or inventing things at the Wheeze with George as he wants to be; how Ron absolutely supports Hermione and everything she wants to do - advocacy! creature rights! magical law! - but he is losing himself at home and he was losing himself at the Aurors and neither one of them is sure what to do to fix things —

Tell me about Ron and Neville out for a drink with some of their D.A. lags, drinking pints of ale in the half-dark of Hannah Longbottom’s bar and talking about Neville’s first year officially teaching his own classes, about lesson plans and nervous first years and NEWT-level Herbological lessons and Ron just staring at Neville in disbelief, Ron feeling like he’s been hit with a bag full of rogue bludgers because _this_ is the thing that the Aurors were missing, this is what local league Quidditch and volunteering and tinkering with half-finished inventions was missing: that feeling of accomplishment after a good lesson, knowing that practice made perfect and _Wingardium Leviosa_ into a feather floating high above their heads; that glowing ember feeling sparking to life in his chest when Moody told him he’d make a good Auror, when Lupin taught him to master that monstrous spider of his nightmares, how it felt to stand up to Snape in the middle of a lesson and be _right_ —

I want you to imagine Ron going back to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts and finding himself happier there than he was anywhere else; Ron going back and monitoring the first years sneaking into the dueling club, telling them to punch their opponents in the nose if their spells don’t work on the first cast. Imagine Ron promising his second years he won’t Obliviate them or lead them down to the Chamber of Secrets if they don’t get their homework in on time - but no promises for his sixth years who skip classes, or the fourth years who copy the old scrolls of Hermione’s essays they found buried in the back of the library.

Think about Ron marking papers with Neville in the teacher’s lounge and going over lesson plans with Hermione after dinner, her latest legal case set aside for a discussion on whether or not grindylows are too advanced for this batch of third-year Ravenclaws, and where did Lupin even _get_ one for that tank in his classroom, anyway? Think about Ron with his sixth and seventh years with practical defensive spells: Ron the strategist, Ron so calm in dangerous situations, Ron taking his time to teach them the way his own rarely did: with patience, with practice, with care. Ron and his OWL-level class: his top girl casts her first Patronus in the middle of the practical and his heart nearly beats out of his chest when McGonagall tells him that Sasha Feldman’s silver otter gamboled across the great hall, that the happy memory she conjured was of being eleven years old, wand in hand, walking into her first day of Defense.

Think about Ron at the end of his first NEWT-level class, trying to explain to teenagers who were barely older than he was on the Horcrux hunt that it isn’t all proper wandwork and perfect incantation; Hermione memorized a thousand books and not a one helped her put the basilisk fang through Hufflepuff’s cup, no spell or flash of sparks helped him find the courage to raise Gryffindor’s sword and slice it through Riddle’s terrible locket. “It’s luck,” he tells them, their eyes wide and fearful in the low evening light. The sun has set and class has been over for ten minutes; downstairs the Great Hall is coming alive with the sounds of dinner. “It’s luck, and it’s doing what’s right, and it’s coming back to finish what you’ve started no matter how far off the path you think you’ve fallen. There’s no such thing as too late, okay? Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise can fuck off.”

Think about how they’ll laugh at that, the spell over them broken, and how Ron will stay in the classroom even when his students have finally wandered down to dinner, thinking of how he stood in this room at twelve, at fourteen, at sixteen, how the room has passed from Lupin’s fantastic creatures lining the walls to Moody’s foe detectors, from Umbridge’s ugly cat plates and Snape’s bottled potion ingredients to his own strange ephemera: diagrams and shield cloaks and old wanted posters, maps of Hogsmeade and London and the Underground, with little pins sticking up from where he caught kidnappers, illegal potions’ dealers, that low-rent pimp with the chimera egg. Hermione’s picture sits beaming up at him from the edge of his desk, Rosie and Hugo beside it, the hideously orange Chudley Cannons banner Harry bought him is draped right above his professor’s chair. All that history, all that time, and now it’s _his_.

“I didn’t think I’d be good at it,” he will tell his best friend later, Hermione standing with her back to the sink as he clears away the dinner dishes, listens for the sounds of Hugo going through his maths homework in the next room. “I mean - you remember how pants I was at school. Probably wouldn’t even have passed my owls if it weren’t for you and your notes,” and when she scoffs he will flick soap at her, adding, “They were _meticulous_ ” in that voice that means, _“you’re a know-it-all”_ , that means _“and I love you.”_

Think about Hermione drying dishes with her elbow brushing his, that closeness that comes from years of shared contact, of frayed threads mending. Her hair is practically electric with static as she stands up on tiptoe to kiss him, that little shockwave of love new again after all this time. “Stop fishing for compliments,” she teases, “You’ve always been brilliant,” and he sputters when she splashes him but smiles all the same.

“Come on, Professor Weasley. Time to finish up.”


End file.
